{"id":141,"date":"2002-10-16T22:36:52","date_gmt":"2002-10-17T02:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/sorry_about_my_oven_exploding_and_all"},"modified":"2002-10-16T22:36:52","modified_gmt":"2002-10-17T02:36:52","slug":"sorry_about_my_oven_exploding_and_all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2002\/10\/sorry_about_my_oven_exploding_and_all.html","title":{"rendered":"Sorry About My Oven Exploding and All"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marissalingen.com\/morphism.html\" title=\"She of the no-titles\">M&#8217;ris<\/a>, Mark, Tim, and Amber came over tonight for dinner.  We had salad.  We had <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marissalingen.com\/101602.html\">lefse<\/a>.  We had chocolate pots de creme.  And we had broiled flank steak.  Well&#8230; we <em>almost<\/em> had broiled flank steak.   The steak was about halfway done when I heard a couple of sharp pops, accompanied by bright flashes of light coming from behind the oven.  &#8220;Ummm&#8230; that didn&#8217;t sound good,&#8221; said my guests.  &#8220;No, it didn&#8217;t,&#8221; I said, as I watched white wisps of smoke wafting up from behind the oven.<\/p>\n<p>After waiting a bit to make sure that the apartment wasn&#8217;t going to catch on fire, it seemed best to go to La Bodeguita del Medio and get some Cuban food and mojitos (&#8220;Mojito&#8221;: Spanish for &#8220;a drink that makes everything all better&#8221;).  So all in all it was a successful evening.  I returned <cite>Diamond Age<\/cite> to M&#8217;ris, and lent her the <cite>Sandman<\/cite> series.  In turn, M&#8217;ris and Tim gave me some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kithrup.com\/brin\/\">David Brin<\/a> reading recommendations.  I had read <cite>Earth<\/cite> many years ago, but Tim assures me that the <em>Uplift War<\/em> series is much better.  Speaking of Brin, he also has a very interesting essay on his site, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.kithrup.com\/brin\/libertarianarticle1.html\" title=\"Also, some good articles on Star Wars there\">The Case for a Cheerful Libertarianism<\/a>&#8220;.  It&#8217;s really quite good.  Almost enough to make one become a libertarian, if one were just a <em>little<\/em> more inclined that way.  Actually, Brin&#8217;s brand of cheerful pragmatism has a lot going for it in general.  Very few people like humorless ideologues, no matter what their political persuasion.  And <em>nobody<\/em> likes to be called stupid or evil.  One wonders why calling one&#8217;s opponents stupid or evil is such a popular debating tactic.  But then, of course, one is forced to take a look at one&#8217;s own writings, and one begins to feel depressed.  One thinks it best to call it a night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Ummm&#8230; that didn&#8217;t sound good,&#8221; said my guests.  &#8220;No, it didn&#8217;t,&#8221; I said, as I watched white wisps of smoke wafting up from behind the oven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}